This is the ninth collection in Hong Zeng's series of short stories: poetic, philosophical, and tinged with magical realism. The collection rewrites Ancient Greek and Eastern myths. These stories derive their core images and symbolism from Zeng's own creative poetry. In "Narcissus", a woman overwhelmed by the quiet burdens of daily life discovers a secluded lake where mysterious narcissus flowers never fade. As she returns, the lake becomes a living mirror, revealing her forgotten memories, loneliness, and hidden desires until it lures her to surrender to its depths. Reimagining the Narcissus myth, the story uses the lake, flowers, mand reflections to symbolize identity, memory, and the seductive danger of escaping reality by becoming consumed by the self. In "When the River Recedes", after being abandoned by her partner, Linta is haunted by a river that recedes whenever she tries to drink, echoing the Greek myth of Tantalus, whose eternal punishment was to stand in water he could never drink beneath fruit he could never reach. As dreams blur myth and memory, she realizes the true punishment is not thirst itself, but believing it must be satisfied. By embracing her children, poetry, and ordinary life, she transforms longing into resilience, making thirst not of deprivation, but of creativity and acceptance. In "Mist Over the Phantom City", In a rain-soaked city shrouded in fog, Yuxin is drawn by a mysterious man in black into an increasingly claustrophobic descent that mirrors the myth of Persephone and Hades. As the city itself becomes an underworld of loneliness, alienation, and psychological vulnerability, she realizes the greatest danger is not physical abduction but the gradual surrender of her agency to temptation and emotional dependence. In "The Amnesiac", an amnesiac awakens with no identity and discovers a world transformed into a maze of sounds, memories, and shifting realities. Echoing the myth of the Minotaur within the labyrinth of Knossos, the bull-headed figure becomes a symbol of the hidden self and the unknown within. In "Awakening", a woman awakens inside a stone coffin with no memory, voice, or identity, and wanders from a moonlit forest into a dawn market where she remains unseen by the living. She discovers a world of endless noise, suffering, and forgotten beauty. The story echoes the myths of Persephone and Orpheus, exploring the boundary between life and death, loss and remembrance. Like Orpheus, she is a singer separated from her own voice; like Persephone, she exists between two worlds, unable to fully return. Inspired by solar crow traditions such as Yatagarasu, the rebirth symbolism of the Phoenix, and the celestial bird archetype of Garuda, "The Crow" tells of a heavenly white bird that pursued the sun's forbidden fire and was burned into darkness by the very light it sought. Cast into the mortal world, it became a feared black crow carrying the remnants of divine flame and the weight of forgotten souls. Hong Zeng holds two PhDs in literature and served as a professor of literature at Carleton College and Hamline University in the United States. She is the author of five books of literary criticism published in America, several dozen critical essays on literature, and a bilingual (Chinese-English) poetry collection.
